Nine Lives (24 page)

There was a part of her that actually feared the confrontation when she and Presley came face to face again. She wasn't sure if she would be able to maintain control. In her estimation, what he was capable of doing made him highly expendable. She had no problem facing the fact that it might come down to him or her.

Somewhere along the way, she became aware that her fuel was running low. Despite her reluctance to stop, she was going to have to get gas before she could continue. About ten minutes later, she passed a roadside sign indicating she was approaching an exit. When she saw the large, well-lit truck stop just off the highway, she turned off the road and pulled up to the pumps. She got out, tried to use her credit card and after four tries, gave up and went inside to pay cash.

When she came back out the pump turned on as sweetly as a cheerleader in the back seat of a car with the quarterback of the high school football team. Within minutes, her fuel tank was full. She replaced the hose. Her cell phone, which she normally kept clipped to the waistband of her jeans, was lying on the passenger side of the seat. She didn't bother with it as she hurried back inside to make a quick trip to the bathroom.

 

Wilson kept glancing at his watch, then the mile markers on the side of the interstate, wishing there was a quicker way to get where he was going. He was thinking about Cat chasing a killer on her own, fully aware that she would ignore her own safety in order to catch Presley.

He'd been on the road for the better part of three and a half hours, having already stopped once for fuel and some coffee to keep him awake. He was exhausted physically, but the adrenaline rush he was riding kept him from a mental shutdown. He kept remembering what Presley had done to Marsha Benton.

After he'd finally downed the last of a cup of coffee that had gone cold, he picked up his cell phone. He needed to check in with Cat, to make sure she was all right and that he was still on course.

He dialed the number, then counted the rings. When her voice mail came on, he got a sick, empty feeling in the pit of his stomach.

Where in hell was she? She had to be all right.

He left a message, then pressed down on the accelerator. He was already doing eighty. Another five miles over the speed limit wasn't going to change the fact that, if he drove up on the highway patrol, he would be getting one hell of a fine. But they were going to have to catch him first.

 

Cat came out of the truck stop with a bottle of pop and a package of Twinkies. Pure sugar and some caffeine were the next best things to drugs for staying awake. It wasn't hard to notice the difference in temperature the farther south she went. It had been in the thirties when she left Dallas and now, according to the thermometer that registered on the rearview mirror of her SUV, it was in the fifties.

She jumped in her car and buckled up, put the pop in a holder built into the dash, opened the Twinkies and started the engine. The laptop was still in the seat beside her, still registering movement down I-35. It appeared that he might be heading into Mexico, but no matter. As long as he kept moving, he was hers.

She drove back onto the interstate. She knew that Laredo, which was on the Texas side of the border, had an international airport and, remembering that he'd flown himself to Tyler to dump Mimi's body, knew there was a chance that he would fly himself out of the country from there. She had to catch up with him before that happened.

As she drove, she wondered why she hadn't heard any more from Wilson, then discarded the thought as being weak. She'd been on plenty of chases before, and she always caught her man. She didn't need anyone to take care of her—even though the notion of seeing Wilson McKay's familiar face was more appealing by the hour. The scent of the Twinkies beckoned, so she ate them in three bites apiece, washing them down with Pepsi.

She was licking the white fluffy filling from the tips of her fingers when her cell phone rang. She wiped her hands on the legs of her jeans, then dug around in the seat for the phone, which had slipped beneath the laptop. It was on the fifth ring before she got it to her ear.

“Hello?”

“ThankGod,” Wilson muttered. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. Why wouldn't I be?” Cat snapped.

“Oh, hell, Catherine…I don't know. For starters, maybe because you're trailing a killer by yourself?”

“I'm not by myself,” she snapped back. “You're here.”

Wilson stifled the urge to shout but was unable to mask his sarcasm.

“Excuse the hell out of me, Miss Dupree, but I am nowhere near you, which continues to cause me concern.”

“You know what I mean,” she snapped.

“Yes. And you, by God, know what
I
mean, too, so don't play dumb with me, okay?”

She didn't respond, so he changed the subject.

“Where are you?”

“Somewhere between Austin and San Antonio. Closer to the latter, I think.”

“Is the blip still tracking southbound on I-35?”

“Yes. I'm pretty sure he's heading for the border, although there's an international airport in Laredo.”

Wilson frowned. “Damn, you're right…but why go so far to catch a plane?”

“I don't know. I'm just guessing and driving. Where are you?”

“I'm just now on the south edge of Austin. Probably at least an hour behind you.”

“Are you driving too fast?”

“Hell yes.”

Cat grinned. “If you find any highway patrol, bring them with you.”

“They have no authority across the border. For that matter, neither do you.”

“Authority isn't all it's cracked up to be over there anyway,” Cat said. “I'll be fine. I've done this before.”

“But not with this much at stake.”

She got quiet.

Wilson sighed. “Just promise to call and keep me updated on everything.”

“Yes. I will.”

“Drive safe,” Wilson said. He heard the line go dead, then the dial tone. “Witch,” he muttered, and tossed his cell phone on the seat.

 

Mark was shaking as he drove past the city limit sign on the north side of San Antonio. He needed some food, and he needed some sleep, but he wasn't likely to get the latter for some time to come. Still, he could get a hamburger while he was waiting for his driver to show up—if he came. From their conversation, he wasn't all that convinced it was going to happen. However, when he saw a sign up ahead advertising fuel and food, he took the exit.

There was a gas station on the corner, with a fast food place across the street. He got the fuel first, then headed for a pay phone.

He called Solomon Tutuola again, thinking to himself as the phone began to ring that he was thoroughly fucked if the man didn't answer. There was no time to locate another driver. However, to his relief, the call was answered on the third ring.

“Hola.”

“Tutuola?”

“Yes.”

“Are you in San Antonio?”

“Yes.”

Mark breathed a sigh of relief.

“I'm at a burger joint called The Beef and Bean. It's on the north side of the city, just off I-35.”

Tutuola wrote down the info as quickly as possible.

“How long do you think it will take you to get here?” Mark asked.

“I'm on the south side of the city. Traffic is pretty thick. Maybe as long as thirty minutes.”

“That's fine,” Mark said. “It will give me time to eat. Come into the burger joint when you get here.”

“All right,” Tutuola said.

“What are you driving? How will I know you?” Mark asked.

“When you see my face…you will know that it is me.”

Mark frowned. At this point, he wasn't into riddles. “What the hell does that mean?” he asked.

“Think of your worst nightmare come to life,” Solomon said, then disconnected.

Mark's frown deepened as he headed across the street. Once he pulled into the parking lot, he could see the place was doing a good business. The lot was nearly full, and, through the windows, he could see people eating.

Once inside, he was promptly seated in a corner at the back of the room. He wanted to be near an exit, and still be able to see who was coming and going. Satisfied with where he was, he ordered a burger and fries, and a large glass of iced tea.

The tea came first, and he downed it as the waitress looked on, then pushed it toward her for a refill, which she calmly provided. When he was finally alone, he leaned his head against the back of the booth and quietly closed his eyes.

God, he was tired. If he could just stretch out and sleep, he would be grateful. At this point, however, it wasn't a luxury he could afford.

He waited impatiently for his food to come, and when it finally did, he lit into it as if he'd been starving. A few bites into the meal, he realized that if he didn't slow down, he was going to be sick. He hadn't had solid food in days, and this basket of beef and grease was a poor choice to have made.

He slowed his chewing, drinking more tea than eating, and was glancing at his watch when he saw a set of headlights turn off the highway and into the parking lot. The time was about right. He frowned, wondering if this was his ride.

He saw the car door open, but just as the dome light came on, a truck pulled between the café and the car, blocking his view. By the time the truck passed, the driver was out of sight. Mark found himself staring at the front door. Just as he saw the door being opened from the outside, a group of customers got up from the table in front of him and sauntered toward the front, arguing about who was going to pay the bill as they went. Again he was forced into a wait-and-see situation.

The group of men paused up front by the cash register, teasing the hostess who was taking their money, and then suddenly everyone got quiet at the same time.

Mark caught himself holding his breath, watching as the men standing there began to move aside, as if making sure they were out of the way.

And then Mark saw him, standing in the front of the room, searching the tables for a man on the run. It took a few moments for everything to register. There was the extreme height of the man, who appeared to be seven or eight inches over six feet. And then there was the pulled-back mane of long black curly hair, framing a face straight out of a bad dream. A geometric maze had been tattooed on his face and arms, and although he couldn't see them, Mark suspected the tattoos were all over his body, as well.

Then the stranger looked straight at Mark, and without pause, came toward him. He stopped at Mark's booth, then smiled.

When Mark saw the perfectly filed teeth, he shuddered.

“Are you ready to go?” Solomon asked.

Mark took a quick drink of his tea, then asked, “How did you know it was me?”

“Who else but a man on the run would hide in the shadows in the back of the room?”

Mark frowned, tossed a handful of bills on the table, then slid out of the booth, only to find himself staring at the third button on the man's shirt. It was to that button, that he gave his first order.

“Follow me.”

To his relief, the demon who would be driving him to hell followed without a word.

C
at was caught between desperation and panic. When the blip she'd been following had suddenly come to a stop about half an hour ago, her heart had stopped with it.

All she could think was that she was going to lose him. There was an airport in San Antonio. What if he got on a plane before she got to the city? Why hadn't she called the police? They might have given her the benefit of the doubt. Why was she such a hard-headed, do-it-by-herself woman? Hadn't she already learned the hard way that didn't always work?

But true panic didn't set in until she realized she was no longer following the blip. At that point she hit the brakes and pulled over to the side of the interstate, then quickly scanned the screen on the laptop, making sure she wasn't misreading it.

“Oh crap,” she muttered, as she began to reassess her position in accordance with the city map of San Antonio that was on the screen.

Somewhere within the last few miles, Presley had stopped and she'd passed him. But where?

She turned in her seat, looking back at the buildings and exits, then comparing them with the map on the laptop. Cars were flying past her, blinding her with their headlights to the point that she couldn't tell where she was at. Finally, not knowing what else to do, she pulled back into traffic and took the next off ramp. She began to backtrack, using the side streets and access roads until she came to an intersection. According to the map, she should be able to see the car. And she probably could. She just didn't know what the bastard was driving.

A car behind her honked, telling her to move on or get out of the way, and out of frustration, she pulled into the parking lot of a small burger joint. Now that she was here, she glanced at the map again. By all indications, she was right on top of him.

Desperate not to miss him again, she took her foot off the brake and continued driving between the lanes of parked cars, searching the faces of the customers who were coming and going. None of them was Presley.

As she turned to circle the lot again, two men walked out from between a row of parked cars and stepped directly in front of her. She hit the brake at the same time that she recognized Mark Presley.

He looked far different from the man who'd been supposedly comatose in that hospital bed. When she saw that the blip on the screen continued to move although they were on foot, she remembered Pete had bugged more than Presley's cars. The motion had to come from something he was carrying, or something that was on him. He was carrying an oversized duffel bag, as well as an armful of clothes. The bug could have been anywhere.

She was so focused on watching where Presley went that she almost didn't see the man he was with until they stopped beneath a security light, their backs to her. She first noticed the other man then, and was shocked at his size. Then her gaze moved to the thick bush of curly hair pulled into a pony tail at the back of his neck, and she wondered how he ever got something that unruly washed and dried. It wasn't until he turned sideways that she got a momentary glimpse of his profile.

As she did, a strange, anxious feeling skittered through her belly, then quickly disappeared. The stranger didn't matter. He couldn't matter. It was time to make her move. She had to stop Presley now, before he went any farther. She reached toward the glove box for her handgun and taser, slipped the taser in her pocket and was reaching for the door latch when the big man turned and faced her.

For a full fifteen or twenty seconds, Cat had a clear and unfettered view of his face, and in those seconds, the world fell out from under her.

She didn't know that she started moaning, or that she'd broken out in a cold sweat. All she knew was that she was no longer in her car in a San Antonio parking lot but back in her childhood home, trying to run from the intruder who'd come out of their bathroom.

 

She was screaming for her father when the intruder's arm slid around her chest and lifted her off her feet. She saw the strange geometric designs on his arm, then on the side of his face, as the cold slash of steel from his knife suddenly slid against her throat. The coppery scent of her own blood was thick in her nose as he dropped her to the floor, leaving her to watch as he slammed the same knife into her father over and over again. She tried to scream, but the sounds wouldn't come. The last things she saw before everything went black were the look of sorrow on her father's face and the demon who'd killed them running out the front door.

 

Suddenly someone was honking at Cat to move on. She came to with a gasp, much as she had in the emergency room when they'd finally closed the gash in her throat and given her back her life. Her gaze was frantic as she searched the parking lot for the two men, but they were nowhere in sight. She glanced at the clock on the dash and realized she'd been sitting there for at least ten minutes. Ten long minutes in which she'd given Presley a second chance to escape.

“Oh God, oh God, oh God.”

The car behind her honked again. Too rattled to think what to do first, she finally took her foot of the brake and pulled out of the lane of traffic, parked, got out and threw up—over and over, until there was nothing left in her stomach to come up. At the point of hysteria, she fell to her knees.

“Hey, lady, are you all right?”

The stranger's voice was startling. Cat's hand went to her belt, but the gun was in the car. It took her a few moments to realize it was neither Mark nor the demon who was talking to her.

“Yes…yes…I'm fine,” she finally answered, then got back in the car and locked the doors.

She was shaking so hard she had to hold onto the steering wheel to steady herself. She could feel the cold plastic against the palms of her hands and was cognizant of the way her fingers curled as she struggled to hang on. Even then, with a street light in her face and the scent of cooking burgers up her nose, she felt as if she were coming undone.

She rocked where she sat in an odd, repetitive motion, trying to think what to do next. She could see that the blip on the screen was once again, moving, but she couldn't quit shaking enough to drive. If she didn't pull herself together, she was going to lose the man who'd killed Mimi, as well as the man who'd ended her father's life.

Wilson. She needed to call Wilson.

She reached for her phone, but dropped it twice before getting the call to go through.

 

Wilson was less than half an hour from San Antonio when his cell phone began to ring. He glanced at caller ID. Cat. Since they'd just talked a short while ago, he was guessing that something was going down. He answered quickly.

“Hello, honey. What's—”

She was mumbling and groaning and basically making no sense. The sounds scared him to death.

“What the hell's wrong? Are you all right?”

“He was here! He was here, and I couldn't—it was too fast and I—ah, Jesus, Wilson…Jesus…”

Wilson felt sick to his stomach. He'd never heard her in this kind of shape. She sounded like she was having a breakdown.

“Catherine…take a deep breath and then talk to me. You're not making any sense. Did you find Presley?”

“Yes…but he wasn't…I let him…not sure how to—”

“Are you in your car?”

“Yes, but I—”

“Are you driving? Catherine…are you driving?”

“No…no, in the parking lot.”

“What parking lot?”

“They were under the security light, and then he turned around and—”

“Who turned? Was it Presley? Did he see you? Did he hurt you?”

“No. No. He didn't see me. He didn't hurt me. It was the other man…the one who killed Daddy.”

Wilson was so shocked by what she'd just said that he swerved and almost ran off the road.

“What the hell are you saying? I thought you were after Presley?”

She started to cry—quiet, almost silent sobs that tore straight through him.

“I am…was…didn't expect to see—”

She hiccupped on a sob.

Wilson cursed.

“Don't move. Tell me exactly where you are, and I'll come and get you. I can't be more than half an hour from where—”

Cat blinked as reality began to surface.

Half an hour?

She'd already wasted time having this…this…fit. She didn't have the luxury of waiting. Waiting another half hour on top of the time she'd already lost could mean losing Presley altogether. She took a deep breath, making herself focus when she wanted to crawl into some dark corner and never come out.

“No. No. It might be too late,” she mumbled, and then grabbed a handful of tissues from a box on the floor of her car and blew her nose.

“But you…”

Cat shuddered, then dug the heels of her hands against her eyes.

“I'm okay…or at least I will be,” she said. “I'm pulling out of the parking lot now. They're still heading south on I-35. Unless they pull off the road somewhere I don't know about, they appear to be heading to Laredo.”

“Cat, please, wait for me.”

“I can't. I'll be all right. It was just the shock that rattled me.”

“Look! If you're right, then you're no longer following one killer, you're following two. You're going to fool around and get yourself killed. Please don't go.”

“Just keep driving. If things change, I'll let you know.”

“Don't hang up, Catherine. God damn it, don't hang up!”

The line went dead in his ear.

“Christ Almighty,” he muttered, and grabbed his cell phone.

He didn't know what was going to happen, but he wasn't letting her call the shots any longer. He dialed the number Joe Flannery had given him.

“Homicide,” a woman answered.

“I need to talk to Detective Flannery. Tell him it's Wilson McKay.”

“I'm sorry, but Detective Flannery doesn't come on duty until—”

“Find him!” Wilson said. “Tell him it's about Marsha Benton's murder.”

“Please hold,” the woman said.

Wilson saw the lights of San Antonio in the distance. If only Cat had waited. He was trying not to panic when Flannery came on the line.

“This is Flannery.”

“Sorry to be calling at this time of the morning, but we've got a situation,” Wilson said.

“I'm already dealing with a situation,” Deaver said. “I'm at Dallas Memorial trying to figure out what caused the fire that—”

“It was Presley,” Wilson said.

Flannery almost dropped the phone.

“What the hell do you mean, it was Presley? Whatever you think you're about to tell me, just stop it right there. As best we can tell, Mark Presley is dead, along with at least a half-dozen other patients.”

“No. He's not dead. He's the one who caused the fire,” Wilson said. “At least, we think he did.”

Flannery's stomach rolled.

“Talk to me, and it better make sense,” he said.

“Here's what I know. Catherine Dupree suspected Presley was faking his condition. She had someone bug some of his things. She had the tracking program on a laptop. She said that within an hour of the explosion at Dallas Memorial, there was movement at his office. She's been following him south on I-35 ever since midnight. I just talked to her again. They're both south of San Antonio. She thinks he's heading for the border, or maybe the international airport in Laredo. I begged her to wait for me to catch up, but she wouldn't. I don't know how to make you believe me, but I'm telling you, this is on the up and up.”

“Jesus Christ,” Flannery muttered. “Do you know how far-fetched all this sounds?”

“Hell yes. That's why she didn't call you before she left Dallas. But she was right about Marsha Benton, wasn't she? She found her body when no one else would believe that Benton was even dead. She said that Benton was pregnant with Presley's baby. That's already been proved, too, right? So why are you hedging now?”

Flannery turned around, staring at the black smoke and flames still coming from parts of the hospital, then dropped his head and scrubbed a hand across his face. It was too early in the morning and too damned cold for all this crap.

“Okay. Say I believe you. Say I notify the Texas Highway Patrol. Say I give them a description and tag number for Dupree's vehicle.”

“Do it,” Wilson begged. “Tell them to assist her in following and catching Presley.”

“What proof do we have that it's Presley? What if it's someone else entirely who's got the stuff?”

“Well, hell,” Wilson muttered. “Then you've still caught a thief, haven't you, because the bugs she's tracking were planted at Presley's private office. So it's either Presley on the run or a thief who's stolen his clothes and money.”